Specialized education best way to foster creative young talent
- Source: Global Times
- [21:16 March 09 2010]
- Comments
Illustration: Liu Rui
By Yao Le
Specialized education, where schools are set up to cater for gifted children in areas such as music, art and sport, has been promoted in China for a few years. It aims at providing professional instruction for gifted children in a bid to fully develop their talents and interests and thus foster talent in various fields. Many schools offer special classes in subjects like science, calligraphy, and music. Special training schools, like sports schools, are springing up all over the place.
Specialized education has been criticized from the very beginning. Some believe that specialized education cannot foster professional talent, and the idea of so-called specialized education is completely false. In my perspective, specialized education benefits the cultivation of innovative talent.
Currently, it is the twisted development of specialized education in China, rather than the idea itself, that has caused some unsatisfying results.
Gifted children definitely exist. Some individuals are born outstanding in certain fields.
For instance, some kids are quite sensitive to numbers, shapes, colors and melody, while others have extraordinary balance. These kids are probably able to develop such gifts and become future mathematicians, designers, painters, pianists or gymnasts. They may bring wonderful ideas and innovations to the world.
How should these talented kids be educated? Those who are against specialized education insist that all kids should be placed in the same educational environment, which they believe is fairer and will promote children's comprehensive development.
However, here an important prerequisite is ignored: Such a "undiscriminating" choice is correct only in a reasonable educational environment in which all students possess enough freedom to develop their interests and they won't be judged by a unique set of criteria.
Sadly, this is hardly the reality in China.
In most Chinese schools, students look exactly the same as each other. Few school graduates have special skills or personality.
In other words, the "undiscriminating" education has cultivated ordinary weeds, rather than free-growing flowers. The so-called comprehensive development actually becomes "average development." The vigor of a society heavily relies on its talent in various fields. It's a pity that in China a kid's originality is often stifled from the beginning.
In such a circumstance, specialized education is probably the best choice to guide and develop children's talent. Another alternative is to let talented kids drop school and chase their dreams, like pianist Lang Lang and snooker player Ding Junhui.
But most Chinese will undoubtedly find this way too expensive and risky.
The achievements of specialized education are obvious, especially in sports. During the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, all of the 50 Chinese athletes who won a total of 32 golden medals came from various sports schools across China. Without the professional training and competitive atmosphere provided by those sports schools, most of them would never have the opportunity of standing on the champion's podium.
It's true that the overall results of China's current specialized education are not great. For instance, few art classes have produced well-known painters, calligraphers or musicians. But this shouldn't be a reason to stop specialized education. It's like a seed that isn't watered properly and so doesn't grow into a flower. We cannot blame the seed.
In practice, there are two problems with specialized education in China. The first is that many parents send their kids to receive specialized education purely in order to get extra points in the National College Entrance Examination, not because they're genuinely gifted. Students who specialize in sports, arts or other fields can get as much as 20 extra points on the exam.
Schools providing specialized education also sometimes completely neglect students' development of qualities in other respects, which leads to unhealthy and imbalanced children.
Most importantly, specialized education teachers still use outdated cramming methods rather than modern teaching techniques, and so fail to interest students. As time goes by, fast learners lose interest while slow learners lose confidence. Specialized education, supposed to develop gifts, ends up stifling talent.
These problems can be solved through practical methods, such as improving teaching methods and content in specialized education and promoting teachers' interaction with students.
We should also standardize examination procedures and pay attention to gifted students' innovation and diligence, not just their specialist skills.
With these problems solved, we can expect considerable rewards from specialized education in the future.
The author is a PhD candidate at the Department of History, Nanjing Univeristy. forum@globaltimes.com.cn
